Luke 17:11-19
October 13, 2013
William G. Carter
Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned
back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at
Jesus’ feet and thanked him.
Somewhere between
Samaria and Galilee, ten people were cured of a skin disease. They kept the Old
Testament law by keeping their distance. They recognized Jesus was the Master
of mercy. They did what he told them to do: “Go to the priest, just as the Old
Testament says, and show him that you have already been cured.”
As they go to do
this, they find out they are already
cured. Only one of them comes back to say “thank you.” What a strange little
detail!
In his little book, The Way of the Wolf, Martin Bell asks,
“Where are the nine?” Just imagine, he says. You’ve been cured of a disease
that segregates you. A dreaded skin disease separated the contaminated from the
healthy. Suddenly the disease is gone. So what do you do? Where do you go?
·
Martin Bell imagines one leper was a mother. She
ran back to hug one of her children.
·
Another was a literalist. If the Bible said “go
see the priest,” he went right to his priest.
·
Another was offended. He expected he had to do
something to earn the healing, and Jesus healed him before he could earn it. He
was offended.
Like Jesus, anybody
can ask, “Where are the nine?” What I want to know is this: what was going on
in the one?
Luke says he was a
Samaritan. That is a second strange detail. Back then, everybody hated the
Samaritans, which is precisely why Jesus made one of those Samaritans the hero
of one of his stories, a story that asks, “Who is my neighbor?” Jews and
Samaritans were like oil and water; they did not mix.
When Jesus set out
for the final journey to Jerusalem, he sent an advance team into every village.
A couple of them stopped in a Samaritan village, and when the townspeople heard
Jesus was headed toward Jerusalem, they wanted nothing to do with him. Like oil
and water.
Yet Jesus healed this
one. He was one of the ten lepers. Jesus did not discriminate in his healing,
especially when the illness itself had a discriminating effect. The Jewish Law
was clear: if white spots develop on your skin, you are required to withdraw
from civilization. If anybody comes near you, you were required to yell, “Unclean!
Unclean!” to keep them away.
Here was this man, a
leper. No family, no contact. His only community is with nine other people with
the same disease, all of them Jews. Normally they would have maintained their
racial boundaries, but the only remaining humanity they shared was in their
illness.
I have seen that,
perhaps you too. Go to the cancer survivor celebration, and these diverse
people have something in common. Or parents who meet in the pediatrician’s
office; if their kids suffer from the same kind of ear infection, they compare
notes and trade cell phone numbers. The same illness can bring people together!
The ten lepers call
out for help. When all of them are miraculously healed, it sounds like the old
dividing lines return. Nine of them take off, presumably to go see a priest in
Jerusalem, to have the healing certified and to be restored to their families. But
the Samaritan doesn’t have the same priest; all he has is Jesus.
He turns back to say
thanks. Jesus says, “Where are the nine?” I try to imagine what kind of look he
had on his face. Was he disappointed that they didn’t come back? Was he
bewildered that they didn’t appreciate the gift of getting their lives back?
Was he smirking that those obedient Jews were in such a hurry to get to the
priest that they severed whatever ties they had forged with their one-time
neighbor? We don’t know.
What we do know is
that gratitude is a spiritual problem. People who have good things given to
them are reluctant to say thanks.
How many of you were
forced to write thank you notes by your parents? It reminds me of the back page
article that I once read the New Yorker
some time back? A middle-aged man remembers Christmas and the days following. He
recalls,
Every present under our Christmas tree
was just the visible tip of an iceberg of obligation. My mother tracked each
package as meticulously as a U.P.S. driver, and her master list haunted my
siblings and me for the rest of winter vacation. Bells would be ringing, snow
would be falling, our friends would be sliding down our street on brand-new
Flexible Flyers - and my sister, my brother, and I would be bent over
tear-spattered sheets of stationery, whimpering. (2)
Can
you remember such a moment? Enforced
Gratitude. It can kill anything that looks like gratitude. I heard about
somebody who said to one of her relatives, “If you don't send me a thank you
note after I send you a gift, you can't count on getting a gift from me next year."
Perhaps she said it to encourage communication throughout the year. But all it
did was stir up more resentment. If you are forced to say thank you, why bother
saying thank you at all?
All of us know how it
is. Gifts are often given with strings attached. My painful recollection is
that book of poems by Edgar Lee Masters, the Spoon River Anthology. It's
based in the imaginary town of Spoon River, Illinois. Masters goes into the
graveyard to read the epitaphs. From the other side of the grave, everybody now
tells the truth about their lives. One of those people is a woman named
Constance Hately. She explains why two adopted nieces grew up to despise her. Listen:
You praise my self-sacrifice,
Spoon River,
In rearing Irene and Mary,
Orphans of my older sister!
And you censure Irene and Mary
For their contempt for me!
But praise not my
self-sacrifice,
And censure not their contempt;
I reared them, I cared for
them, true enough! - -
But I poisoned my benefactions
All through their lives, under the guise of
generosity, Constance said, "Girls, I took you in when your mother died,
and I never want you to forget it. As long as you live beneath her roof, as
long as you sit at my table, I want you to remember how much you depend on
me." As the years passed, they grew to detest her.
It's nearly impossible to force anybody to feel
grateful. Something has to happen inside them. Something more. Maybe that’s why
Luke focuses his attention on the grateful Samaritan. He turns back toward
Jesus. He praises God with a loud voice. He falls down in worship. He returns
to Jesus and gives him eucharist. Or
to keep it a verb, the healed man “eucharists” him.
Eucharist is the Greek verb for giving thanks. The
root of the word is “charis,” which is the word for grace. Not only that, the
prefix “eu” signifies “good.” I think I would like to translate “eucharist” as “grace
made good.” Giving thanks is the spiritual response for any gift of God. And
how could it be otherwise?
Grace means that God
smiles upon us. God gives us gifts of life and faith and healing. God never
stops giving good things to us and to the world. That is grace, reflected in
God’s continuing generosity. And whenever grace sinks deeply into our lives,
the evidence is in our gratitude. The greatest miracle of grace is for anybody
to become grateful. This can be the work of God’s Spirit in our lives. As a
wise person once said, “I have never known a person grateful who was at the
same time small, or mean, or bitter, or greedy, or selfish, or took any
pleasure in anybody’s pain. Never.” (4)
It works both ways. Require
gratitude and it misfires. Insist on your own independence and gratitude never
takes root. The spiritual mystery seems to work in the person who knows how to
receive a gift. The way we receive a gift is the revelation of our character.
Somebody does
something kind. He looks down at his shoes and murmurs, “You shouldn’t have.” Well,
of course, he shouldn’t have, but he did. It’s a gift.
She opens the
wrapping paper, smiles knowingly, and declares, “I was expecting this!” That
suggests it was perceived as an entitlement. No wonder she forgets to say thank
you.
The young lady is
surrounded by packages with bright ribbons and bows, and exclaims, “For me?”
No, these are for the poor folks in the slum, but we haven’t delivered them
yet. She squeals, “for me, for me, for me…” because it is all about her. That is
not gratitude.
Genuine gratitude is a spiritual miracle. I think
that’s why Luke tells this story. By the time he puts this on paper, the Christ
followers have spread into Samaria. There were Samaritans and Jews in the early
church. And what they have in common is eucharist
– thanks to God for sending Jesus to all of them. In death, he forgives them.
In resurrection, he keeps returning to speak and heal.
It
seems to me that the virtues of the Christian life are far more subtle than we
realize. John Calvin said the chief characteristic of being Christian is not
love, or humility, or joy. The chief virtue of the Christian life is gratitude.
Calvin said gratitude is even more important than love. Gratitude is the
fountain of all service and generosity. Gratitude knows we have been claimed,
and rescued, given a new start by the redeeming grace of God in Jesus Christ. This
is the knowledge of the heart. It saves us.
Like
the lady said to me: "Do you know what I came back to church? I needed to
have Someone to thank." Call it eucharist, call it thanks or grace-made-good.
I call it the heart of the matter.
Take a few moments today and think over your gift
list. Who are the people who have shown you the graciousness of God? When was
the last time you said thank you? What better day than the Sabbath, the day given
to us for rest, a day to write notes and offer prayers of thanksgiving? God finds
so many ways to give us so much, and our call is to say thank you.
You know, I believe
Jesus was smiling when the grateful leper came back. Big smile, hearty laugh. The
Lord enjoys the kind of faith that saves us – it is faith expressed in gratitude. For as the mystic said so long ago, “If the
only prayer you ever said was thank you, that would be enough.” (Meister
Eckhart)
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
(1) Martin Bell, The Way of the Wolf (New York:
Ballantine, 1968) 39-42
(2) David Owen, "No
Thanks," The New Yorker 18
December 1995: 128.
(3) Edgar Lee
Masters, Spoon
River
(4) Fred Craddock, “A Note of Thanks,”
The Collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock (Louisville: Westminster John Knox
Press, 2011), 256.
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